


which shade of summer green

by cocotte (chartreuser)



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-27
Updated: 2016-06-27
Packaged: 2018-07-18 16:06:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7321744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chartreuser/pseuds/cocotte
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>In the summer, Jack pulls Eric into Kent's life, coming back to the apartment they have hidden away, and Kent lets him. He lets the both of them.</i>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>It's easy to realise the change—but never the things that have stayed the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	which shade of summer green

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lautjuh1](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lautjuh1/gifts).



> i've tried to stick as close to the prompt as i could possibly get, and hopefully what i have is satisfying enough to overlook the change in direction! i hope hope hope that you like this; your prompts were so incredibly lovely!

Kent doesn’t talk about Jack’s overdose, even if it shifts everything. Changes the established dynamic between them until it’s turned into something unrecognisable, a new Jack Laurent Zimmermann that Kent doesn’t know how to work with. Jack joined the NHL two years after Kent—so much for the nerves that pooled low in his stomach in those too-green years.

 _Blue’s a good colour on you,_ Kent sent to Jack, expecting a reply but not really. It was two years of Kent pleading, maybe, at that point. He’d gotten so used to begging Jack to calm down that it no longer seemed like anything out of the ordinary; just that Jack had stopped responding.

Not that—if Kent had been a little later, a little less worried—Jack would ever know how hard he tried.

But Kent was wrong; Jack had materialised outside his door the next morning, too-awake for half past five, and pushed him in, bringing their mouths together, red from Kent’s teeth, and oh, _fuck_ , he never knew that Jack’s eyes could ever be _that_ shade of blue.

 

 

Jack is different now. Even if he kisses the same way: brash, too desperate. He’d stopped digging his fingers into Kent’s skin. The bathroom door was locked whenever he took his pills, or showered, or shaved. Some part of him grew into himself and Kent couldn’t decide which part; or if you could uproot an entire person from where he was and plant them down into somewhere barren.

(Then again—Kent never knew him sober.)

 

 

To the best of Kent’s knowledge, Jack has stopped taking his pills. Devotes everything he has left to hockey, trying to win, statistics growing so fast that it leaves Kent a little blind; though it’s not to say that he hasn’t been surpassing records of his own—and—and what else is there, really?.

 

 

They sleep together, when Jack makes the effort to see him. It’s turned a little perfunctory now, but Kent doesn’t have a problem with that, he’s been putting up with Jack half-assing everything about them for far too long to give up now. What they’ve got isn’t a romance. He hasn’t deluded himself that far—but it’s at the point where Kent’s not even sure if what they’ve got is a friendship, even.

 

 

After both their teams make the playoffs, Kent asks, “Are we exclusive?”

“I don’t know,” Jack answers, voice steady through the phone. He doesn’t drink now, but Kent does; he drinks enough for the both of them. “Do you want to be?”

“Do _you_.”

“That’s not what I’m saying,” Jack amends, and Kent hangs up.

 

 

“Jack is a great player,” Kent says, to anyone who would listen, because it’s true. It’s always been true.

 

 

Some days, Jack skips out on practice just to see him. Not even a bag on his shoulders.

“You alright?” Kent asks, every time, pulling him into a hug. Jack looks unhappier the each time he shows up; and honestly—Kent’s been waiting.

But it never comes. “Yeah,” Jack would say, blinking down. Before he looks back to Kent with those blue fucking eyes, head tilted suggestively, and it’s routine, it’s good, that’s a newer familiar thing and then one day it’s not _yeah,_ and then sex on the kitchen counters.

Instead: “Do you ever feel lonely?”

Kent’s breath hitches, feeling almost like he’s caught. _I do, around you,_ he wants to say, but he’s not going to, because he might no longer know Jack like he used to but he’s got eyes; Jack’s not doing well. Neither of them are.

“Yeah,” he settles for, instead, and pauses. Lets the air conditioning whir above them, looking back into Jack’s gaze. “I’m sorry.”

 

 

But nothing changes between them, because—that’s how they work. It’s who they are, Kent thinks. Never mind what he ever wanted between them.

 

 

“I think I’ve met someone,” Jack tells him, over the phone, and Kent thinks nothing of it. It’s not the issue of sharing, he thinks. Something else. The pinched eyebrows, Jack kissing him and Kent never knowing exactly how to kiss back.

But this would be good for Jack. Finding his way around someone new. Kent knows he’d still be here anyway; he always is.

“Oh,” Kent says. “Are you planning on dating them?”

Jack sighs, audible through his speaker. “I don’t know,” he says, in a tone that Kent hasn’t been able to recognise in a long, long time.

 

 

Sometimes—people notice the colour of his eyes; claiming that they flow from one shade to another. Kent doesn’t really bother with letting on that he doesn’t really give a shit, anymore, so he shrugs, lifts the corner of his lips up.

“They’re green,” Jack had said, once, drunk, messed up from his pills. “I swear to God, they’re green,” so Kent tells everyone that they’re blue, now.

 

 

In Providence, Jack’s teammates seem surprised to see him there.

“We didn’t know you were coming,” says the goalie, but what he really means is: _we didn’t know you two kept in touch_.

Kent lets out a breath, straightens up his back. “Just wanted to visit Zimms. Is he around?”

Snowy looks at Tater, for a careful moment, and Kent tries to keep a brave face on, if something’s happened to Jack if he did that **again** if he’s at the hospital surely he can pull some strings it’s not that difficult he still keeps in touch with the Zimmermanns he can handle this again Kent will deal with it he always has he can do this one more fucking time—

“He’s with his boyfriend,” someone finally says, and Kent feels his chest tighten, in an entirely different kind of hurt.

 

 

Eric is—he’s _nice_ , on top of looking like him. Blonde, shorter than the hockey average. Cute. Moves with an agility that’s rarely present in non-athletes. Turns out that he’s actually a fucking figure skater that bakes pies, hums songs under his breath. He has pretty eyes, if anything, brown, soft. Eric has one of those stares that resemble Jack’s, slightly, a little too intense, but warm.

 

 

“How’d you meet Jack?” Kent asks.

“At the rink,” Eric says, smiling. “Where else?”

“Yeah,” Kent laughs, forces himself to look away from lean muscle, the stretch of Eric’s neck. “Where else.”

 

 

Eric smiles at Kent widely, all the time, and Jack’s standing there, watching them look at each other, and when Kent remembers to break his gaze, one morning, to look back at Jack, he swears that it’s the first time that Jack’s eyes stop reminding him of the ice.

 

 

“I don’t even know how y’all manage to chirp me so often,” Eric says, over dinner, where Kent’s legs keep on brushing to either Jack’s or his. “It’s the two of you against me.”

“Admit it,” Kent says, leaning back against the chair, refusing to move his feet away. “You’ve got a soft spot for me.”

“Lord help me,” Eric says, meeting his gaze, “I’ve got a soft spot for the both of you.”

Jack says, “You kinda have really shitty taste.”

“Speak for yourself,” Kent grumbles.

Jack rolls his eyes, so does Eric.

“We’re all pieces of shit, fine,” Kent relents, but the words feel nothing like an admission.

 

 

In the summer, Jack pulls Eric into Kent’s life, coming back to the apartment they have hidden away, and Kent lets him. He lets the both of them.

 

 

“He’s just so fucking _young_ ,” Kent says, in what little French he’s managed to keep. They’re watching him figure out the oven, the stove, raiding the cupboards for whatever mess that Kent hadn’t bothered to clean. Jack’s sprawled on the couch. It’s a habit from before.

Jack’s gaze flickers back to him. “We’re not as old as you think we are, Kent,” he says, rearranging his head onto Kent’s lap, and his eyes fall shut.

 

 

“What do you want?” Kent asks, watching the way that Jack leans into the hand buried in his hair.

Jack says, “Pancakes, maybe,” and presses a kiss to the inside of Kent’s wrist.

 

 

“Is this where you usually spend your summers?” Eric asks, eyes trained onto the pot on the stove.

Kent replies, “Jack usually spends them with his parents.”

Eric turns his attention to him, slow. Carefully; the way that he handles everything, his pastries, Jack, the keys that Kent always forgets to hide properly behind the vase. “I’m not asking about him.”

“Oh,” Kent breathes, and thinks about it. “Kinda, yeah.”

Bitty’s eyes are brown, Kent realises, the kind that reminds him of the earth, a little. Stable. The kind that lasts for a few good years.

 

 

They've got nice moments: 

On an empty highway, Jack asks, "Who's this on the radio," and smiles at Kent. The words are meant for Bitty—but Jack's looking at him anyway, shoulders loose. 

“Stop it,” Bitty says, pretending to be annoyed, and failing, really. Kent reaches into the backseat to squeeze his knee.

 

 

Bitty’s made them cookies. Of course he has.

“Kent,” he says, exasperated. “Please stop getting crumbs everywhere in the car.”

“It’s _my_ car,” Kent points out, but Bitty opens his mouth when Jack shoves a cookie in, anyway.

 

 

Their days are all like this. An antithesis to anxiety, if you will—to Kent's or Jack's—he doesn't know. But it's there.

Kent used to think about having this, before. Jack refusing to mention a word of hockey this entire time. Sleeping as early as eight in the evening. Watching his history documentaries on his phone, with Kent’s feet in his lap. And then now: Bitty trying to fight him for the remote control, legs bracketing his thighs. Leaning in to drop an open-mouthed kiss on his neck when he refuses to give it up. Jack pressing his hand onto both their backs. An entirely different context.

But this—this could be good, too.

 

 

One morning, Kent has his head in Jack’s lap, and Bitty’s hands on his ankles, drifting, when Bitty says, “I can’t decide what colour Kent’s eyes are.”

“Green,” Jack claims, because he’s stubborn; he’s been stubborn from the very start. Kent blinks his eyes open to watch Jack studying him, then to Bitty, doing the same.

“Maybe they’re blue,” Bitty points out, and Jack’s eyebrows pinch together.

Kent smiles. “Who knows? Maybe they’re both.”

“Or maybe they change,” Jack insists, and Bitty flicks at him, obviously trying to think of a chirp. Kent’s grin only grows wider.

“Yeah, they do,” Kent says, finally, and wonders what else would.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> eta: i've made some very subtle corrections hahaha but the gist of everything stays the same!


End file.
